Part of the venue’s new focus on live performance, the “dance, music, poetry, and architectural design” PALMS will premiere at the Northwest Film Forum Thursday for a short run on 12th Ave. The hour-long live show that started out as a creative exercise has flourished into a production that has sold out the 118-seat theater for opening night.
PALMS is an abstract representation of a wild animal turning into a woman. Choreographer Paige Barnes said the idea for the show was born 18 months ago when Barnes, dancer Nadia Losonsky, and poet Vanessa DeWolf started getting together and creating snippets of work in response to each other’s art as a way to stay engaged with the creative process. After about a month and a half of the exercises, Barnes said the final product began to emerge.
“I wanted to create that caged bird feeling,” Barnes said. “She’s blocked in by the sound, by the space, by her hands in her pockets.”
The show is alternately soothing and unsettling as the dancers move slowly and calmly and in harsh, spastic bursts to an intentionally grating sound score.
The performance reflects the multi-disciplinary origins — dancers Losonky and KJ Dye move onstage to a combination of snippets of poetry and choreography notes read aloud from the top of the three-tiered stage by DeWolf, as well as foghorns and ambient noise of children playing.
PALMS is the largest performance at the Northwest Film Forum this year and the largest set ever constructed at the theater, says new forum director Courtney Sheehan. The set is constructed in three levels that Barnes said are meant to box the dancers in.
Tickets for the show are $20. Though Thursday’s show is sold out, there are still seats available for the Friday and Saturday performances at 8 PM. You can purchase tickets online up to two hours before the show or at the box office 30 minutes before showtime. To buy tickets and learn more about PALMS visit the Northwest Film Forum website.
For more things to do on and around Capitol Hill, check out the CHS Calendar.
